Motorola answers Xiaomi with its own over-the-air charging

In just the span of two days, we've had two separate smartphone manufacturers show off different wireless charging systems that can charge phones over-the-air. First it was Xiaomi showing off its Mi Air Charge, and now it's Motorola, which is teasing a system that can charge phones from as far as 100cm away. Not only that, but we saw the wireless charger even charging multiple phones at the same time.

It's an impressive piece of kit, to be sure, but for now there aren't a ton of details about it. The charging system was teased in a video posted to Weibo, and apparently, it has a working name of Motorola One Hyper. In the video, we see it charging two Motorola Edge phones placed at different distances away from the charging hub – one at 80cm and one at 100cm.

Charging starts as soon as the phone is placed in front of the hub, and it stops when the person hosting the demonstration puts their hand in front of the charging hub. So, it seems there's some kind of safety feature that prevents wireless charging when something is detected between the charging station and the phones.

What we see in the video is unfortunately all we're getting today. As XDA Developers notes, Motorola uses the Weibo post to ask users if they'd like to see this kind of technology in future Edge devices, but we don't have any kind of timeline for when this kind of wireless charging might see large scale implementation in Motorola's phones.

Still, the fact that we've now seen two companies showing off this kind of wireless charging tech back-to-back is exciting for anyone who is tired of placing their phone on a pad. We'll see what happens from here, and we'll let you know if either Motorola or Xiaomi share more about their systems.